349: Formative Tech Dystopia
22 Oct 2019Why everyone makes everything now, developer documentation, and the seemingly imminent 16” MacBook Pro.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Star Wars Episode X.10.1
- Follow-up:
- Swift's New Diagnostic Architecture Overview
- No Overview Available
- No October event?
- Image of 16" MBP in 10.15.1 beta?
- New Google Stuff
#askatp- How can I tell if I would benefit most from higher single core or multicore performance? (via Tom Zosh)
- Is wired CarPlay crummy? (via Kenny Long)
- 🙉 Destiny stuff 🙉 (blame tobogranyte)
- Post-show: 🚙⚡
Sponsored by:
- DoorDash: Let dinner come to you with DoorDash. Get $5 off your first order of $15 or more with promo code ATP in the app.
- Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. Get a server running in seconds with your choice of Linux distro, resources, and choice of 10 node locations.
Chapters
- Episode X.10.1
- Follow-up: Pi-hole
- Follow-up: Progress bars
- New Swift error messages
- No overview available. 🖼️
- Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
- 16” MBP imminent? 🖼️
- Sponsor: DoorDash (code ATP)
- Everyone makes everything 🖼️
- #askatp: Mac CPUs
- #askatp: Wireless CarPlay
- #askatp: Destiny stuff
- Ending theme
- Neutral: Small electrics
Episode X.10.1
⏹️ ▶️ John Get your star wars tickets everybody. Nope. What there’s another one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is the most marco answer i’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ John made making these you believe that marco I don’t know why you think they’d stop but they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this is this like the The uh, the real series or like an alternate series this time the real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. Okay, is it supposed to be good?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I didn’t try i’m i’m on almost full media blackout So I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, is this the last one or is just like a kind of like bs last one? Like who’s the last one
⏹️ ▶️ John estrus can tell I mean, it’s not the last one but it’s the last one in a set of nine and I’ll start a new story
⏹️ ▶️ John sequence up after that. They aren’t gonna follow the same characters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t think? No. You think they would invest three you know three movies into building up these new characters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then just throw them away and never print money with them again? That
⏹️ ▶️ John seems unlikely. Not these new characters, the old characters. This is the end of the Skywalker saga which
⏹️ ▶️ John only says that it’s going to be end of the Skywalker saga. It doesn’t say that some characters
⏹️ ▶️ John this movie won’t appear in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future. Oh, well, so okay, so that doesn’t mean anything. And basically, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the nine movies have basically been the story of the Skywalker family. And I presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John the next movie will not be the story of someone in the Skywalker family. There’s plenty of other people to tell stories about.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s the are any of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them left who haven’t been vaporized or spoilers. There sure are. Yeah, I bet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet within like three years, they put out episode 10, even if it isn’t called that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it still has like, Ray and Finn like it has like the same
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the same people i think they’ll probably restart the numbering no matter what even if it’s like the same cast of young people
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll probably restart the numbering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh they’ll call it episode x
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah well maybe i don’t think they would restart the numbering but we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ John just because you get to have a number one then you know what i mean like you get to like they hired a bunch of directors
⏹️ ▶️ John who are going to be doing new things and each each one of these directors in theory is getting their own trilogy or some crap which is
⏹️ ▶️ John never never gonna work out. Like, those plans will not actually fall through. But part of the way you
⏹️ ▶️ John get these big name directors is like, you’ll get to start your own, your own trilogy, your own series, and they’ll all want
⏹️ ▶️ John to start from one because there he goes. But we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Star Wars x 10.1 Star Wars x 10.2 Et cetera.
Follow-up: Pi-hole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s start with some follow up. We have some follow up with regard to PyHole. If you recall, PyHole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the- Did you shut yours, Casey? I actually did just moments ago shut
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my PyHole because something was broken on the internet and I thought that might have had something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to do with it. Anyway. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made it all of last episode without laughing at this and making jokes about it, but like, it’s just, I can’t, it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so good, it’s so good. Anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so PyHole is this thing where you have your DNS, your DNS, you use it as your DNS server and it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will just refuse to acknowledge DNS lookups for things that it believes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be like advertisements and tracking and things like that. And we had talked last episode about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how I had discovered a shortcut slash workflow that would let you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quickly and easily disable PyHole in case you find something that isn’t working on the internet. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t happen that often. I’ve only had to do it, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 20 times in the last almost month that I’ve been running it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it does happen. And I had said on the show last week that, oh, I couldn’t really get it to work. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was something was messed up and I didn’t know what. Well, I got a chance to play with it after the fact. And then coincidentally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the original author, Chris Doley, emailed me and pointed me to a Reddit thread wherein
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he released that shortcut to the world. So we’ll put a link in the show notes and so you can download it yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It did work as it turns out. I think what had gone wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was that I have a hostname that points to my house,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I was using that as the hostname for this shortcut, this workflow to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go issue an API request against. But I didn’t think things through in the two seconds that I spent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey playing with it, and I actually do not have the Pi-hole admin interface port forwarded.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it was reaching out to the internet to get to my own network,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the firewall was stopping it coming back into my own network if that makes any sense at all. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in summary, what I needed to do was just use an IP address instead. Once I did that and once I plugged in the correct
⏹️ ▶️ Casey API key, which if you’re following along at home, if you’re in the Pi-hole admin interface, you go to console, settings,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey API slash web interface, show API token, and that is the token you need to plug into the shortcut.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And once you put all that magical special sauce together, the shortcut worked no problem. And it allows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to quickly and easily disable it, or disable it for 30 seconds, or five minutes, or what have you. So again, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put a link in the show notes to that. Additionally, somebody wrote to us, Billy Brawner, who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is apparently putting together a Swift UI app that is open sourced in order to do a very similar thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have not played with this at all. I didn’t even crack the code open. I didn’t have time. But it’s something that we’ll also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put in the show notes in case you wanted to look at that. So those are ways that you can shut your piehole, Marco.
Follow-up: Progress bars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we talked last episode about indicating or progress indicators
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and how they’re all kind of garbage. And Adam wrote in to point us to a YouTube video, which again
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will be in the show notes, wherein Microsoft kind of had an interesting take on this. John, would you like to tell us about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re trying to show something fancier than just a bar that fills from left to right. They’re trying to show throughput
⏹️ ▶️ John to give people an idea of like historically how fast have things been going and how fast are they going now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch the video. It’s a noble effort, but if you showed that to
⏹️ ▶️ John your average computer user, they’d be like, what is this? Like, it does fill from left to right,
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s still there. But it’s just complicated enough that they would probably be blinded to the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that it is essentially filling from left to right. And when it fills all the way to the right, it’s done. Because it looks like a graph. It’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers on it. The numbers change. It’s got a line. It’s got a shaded region. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I get what they’re trying to do. I don’t think they’ve really cracked it. That’s the problem when you say, you know, this tool
⏹️ ▶️ John that we have is so crude and we can’t give accurate feedback about how long things are going to
⏹️ ▶️ John take. Can we put more information in the same area? I mentioned in the
⏹️ ▶️ John last show that like the old Aqua progress bar from the original Mac OS X
⏹️ ▶️ John had one second piece of information, which was, it wasn’t even a real piece of information. It was an animation to let you know
⏹️ ▶️ John things are still happening, even though this bar isn’t moving. But as I said, last show, that’s mostly a lie.
⏹️ ▶️ John that texture animates pretty much no matter what. So it’s not like that animation
⏹️ ▶️ John is telling you anything other than your computer hasn’t entirely frozen, which is somewhat reassuring, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think the solution is to continue to add more and more information. That said, it’s cool to see stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like this and it would be nice if it was an option for people who really did want to see lots of numbers change or
⏹️ ▶️ John run diagnostics or whatever, but I’m not sure it’s the right default choice.
New Swift error messages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, one of you guys put this in the show notes. I’m embarrassed to admit it wasn’t me that spotted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. And I’m assuming this was John, but either way, new diagnostic architecture overview
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Swift.org, on the Swift programming language blog. This is a post
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Pavel Yaskovic, that wherein Pavel goes through and talks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how error messaging is going to hopefully be a a whole lot better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the future, thanks to some changes to how they’re doing type discovery and inference and things of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that nature. I feel like I know Swift okay, and a lot of this, my eyes were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rolling around in my head in opposite directions trying to read through it. However, if you get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the very end, it is really, really worth it. And there’s a heading, Examples of Improved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Diagnostics. And again, I am a Swift apologist. I do quite like Swift.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Some of the code on this is just as inscrutable as C++, which is about as damning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit of—what’s the opposite of praise? As damning an insult I can give to it. But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you look at these examples of improved diagnostics, you can see some actually reasonable-looking Swift and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where it’s wrong and how these error messages have gotten so much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. And I am really, really excited for this. And I think—and this was John, I believe, who pointed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this out, this is going to be really, really interesting and important for SwiftUI.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because as Marco and I both lamented, SwiftUI’s error messaging is so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad, it’s borderline insulting. And this really smells to me like it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be getting a lot better. And in fact, a lot of the examples they use are for SwiftUI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I’m hoping they are. But honestly, like I read through this too, and maybe it’s because I don’t know Swift
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or SwiftUI well enough yet. But I didn’t think that the examples they were showing really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indicated that SwiftUI’s error messaging is going to get that much better. It’s going to get a little bit better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s great. It has a long way to go. But like in the way that a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the error messages you get now have these like crazy long you know huge type
⏹️ ▶️ Marco errors some of which are actually like parse errors sort of but it’s really hard to figure that out. Some of which are like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know you’re somehow returning a value somewhere inadvertently or you’re returning the wrong value somehow inadvertently like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think a lot of these like while it’s good they’re improving this it doesn’t look like they’re improving it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough to make the difference between SwiftUI error message as being useful or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally inscrutable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know about that I think this might get get get you to the point that it’s at least actionable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because one of the things that’s actually conceded in early on in this post is that a lot of Swift error
⏹️ ▶️ Casey messaging you know both for SwiftUI and not it just plain isn’t actionable. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just not useful. And so that’s what a lot of this post is about. But I don’t know, John, what are your thoughts on this?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is kind of what I was talking about last week, where it’s not just a matter of finding some string
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Swift compiler and saying, oh, this message is bad. I’m going to put a different string in there to be more clear with the
⏹️ ▶️ John words that I put in. So you can read this whole article, and you can see how
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a question of phrasing. It’s a question of sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John metadata, and even beyond that, is that you have to do some unexpected
⏹️ ▶️ John things, like continue the compilation process even after you’ve encountered what you know to be a fatal
⏹️ ▶️ John error so that you can produce a better message. Like, you need to have different awareness
⏹️ ▶️ John and data structures and do some fairly Byzantine things, like make a guess at
⏹️ ▶️ John a fix and allow the compiler to continue to try to pinpoint where the actual error is so you have enough
⏹️ ▶️ John information to then construct a better message, right? But even that, as Marco pointed
⏹️ ▶️ John out, that is all with the type checker and the type inference engine.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of Swift errors are inscrutable because of that. But because of the way Swift UI is structured
⏹️ ▶️ John in this domain-specific language, it’s really just fancy word for you
⏹️ ▶️ John can make a bunch of specially named functions with some implicit arguments or return values or
⏹️ ▶️ John implicit state and then nest them inside each other. So it looks like you’re making this cool
⏹️ ▶️ John language of your own curly braces when really it’s a series of change function calls with some stuff that
⏹️ ▶️ John some some implicit code that doesn’t actually appear visibly. And because that’s what it is,
⏹️ ▶️ John and because we’re not accustomed to calling a function that calls a function that calls a function that calls a function that calls a function
⏹️ ▶️ John and then like somewhere in the middle of that chain, something went wrong. That’s why that even when you have a much
⏹️ ▶️ John better type checker, your message may not indicate to you something
⏹️ ▶️ John useful or explicable because you’re not conceptualizing your code as as this giant
⏹️ ▶️ John nested series of function calls, where in fact, that’s what it is. You’re thinking of it as like, OK,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s this structure. You’re thinking of it like you’re declaring data, it’s a big JSON structure or something. You want
⏹️ ▶️ John it to show you where in the JSON you’ve done something wrong, where the compiler doesn’t look at it that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so there’s still some ways to go in bridging the divide. This is a necessary first step
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, if you just had normal Swift code that you would write and not SwiftUI, there’s lots of situations where
⏹️ ▶️ John the type checker will give you a garbage error and you don’t know what the heck it means. This helps with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it also happens to help with those same type of errors that happen in SwiftUI, but I still feel like the
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of novel structure of SwiftUI, that it’s not structured the same way as
⏹️ ▶️ John your pre-SwiftUI and I guess pre-RX or whatever, like your quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John normal imperative Swift code would be structured. Because it’s different,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s still some more work that needs to be done to be able to give better messages. And I think mostly,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, that will probably come down to, I’m just guessing here, I know nothing about compiler design, but I imagine that what it will come down to is some way to
⏹️ ▶️ John better annotate the actual APIs that make
⏹️ ▶️ John up Swift UI so that the compiler knows more about
⏹️ ▶️ John how they’re expected to be used and what the semantics are and how the developer is thinking about it. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know, as opposed to just like a function that adds two numbers together that you call just as a function somewhere versus
⏹️ ▶️ John something like, uh, you know, a function that is used to generate a list or a set
⏹️ ▶️ John of switches or something, and then three levels nested down, you put something that isn’t allowed to be nested in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John It should know like, oh, this type of control isn’t allowed in a list view
⏹️ ▶️ John switch thingy, and be able to phrase that in some way other than referencing
⏹️ ▶️ John the type system. Because that’s like Swift’s tool for everything. It’s like, if your types all
⏹️ ▶️ John add up, everything’s great. And if they don’t, we will tell you what you did wrong in terms of the types.
⏹️ ▶️ John But, and that goes a long way if you have well-chosen types, but sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re like invisible types or types that you didn’t declare that you don’t know the names of that get referenced when in reality
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s trying to tell you something simpler that if someone looking at the code like, oh you can’t put that type of control in this container,
⏹️ ▶️ John or if you do you have to have one of these things over there. So still some ways to go, but uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, progress is being made. And I do think it’s an interesting blog post. It seems like it’s a little
⏹️ ▶️ John might seem like it’s a little over your head but if you just read it slowly and kind of understand what they’re saying and don’t get too bogged down
⏹️ ▶️ John into like the the you know weird generics and templated code they have in the examples.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it does make sense.
No overview available.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So somebody pointed out to me, forgive me, I don’t recall who it was, that the folks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at NS Hipster have put together an unbelievably great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey website, and I am overjoyed that this exists and that I didn’t have to do it myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The name of this website is NoOverviewAvailable, and it’s at nooverviewavailable.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it is subtitled A Survey of Apple Developer Documentation. And so the NS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hipster folks have put together a list of all the Apple frameworks. So these are all the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey top level Apple code groupings, I guess you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could say. I mean, it’s like address book stuff and audio stuff and things of that nature. And there’s a lot of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it goes through all of these and they have written some code to parse how much of the documentation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for all of these different frameworks is actually available. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the name of the website comes from, oftentimes you will see the phrase, no overview available in Apple documentation if they just haven’t done
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it yet. And I got to tell you, scrolling through this, not good times. A lot of orange, a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot of red, not a lot of green. And I actually did intend to count up and get numbers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in front of me with regard to how many are green, how many are orange, and how many are red.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If somebody wants to take the time to do that, please let me know on Twitter or via email. Again, apologies,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t get to do it myself. But just scrolling through this will give you a hint that this does not look good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of my favorites was looking down at audio toolbox mark alarming, which is at 48.9%.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of the audio frameworks have pretty poor showings here, which is not news to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have some questions about the methodology here, though. They were trying to look, they were looking up the symbols in the
⏹️ ▶️ John libraries and finding out how many of those symbols have documentation. Is that what the methodology is?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I didn’t go parsing through the source to figure out exactly what’s going on
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I mean. This is the thing like that’s all they can really do,
⏹️ ▶️ John I suppose, because without documentation, there’s no way to know which symbols are meant
⏹️ ▶️ John to be public. I know Apple has like the one of the underscore reserve for private and stuff like that. But in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s safe to assume that every symbol in the library is supposed to have public documentation, but that’s the only tool they have.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think that might be making things look worse than they actually are. And the second thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I’ve been in, you know, corporate America too long, but I scroll through this list and I think it looks pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John good. There’s a lot of green and orange in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there. Like the state of
⏹️ ▶️ John documentation of code every place I’ve ever worked would not meet these standards. I mean, obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t worked at Apple and these are supposed to be public facing API. But I still
⏹️ ▶️ John think it looks pretty good. I still like expected this thing to come out. That’s a lot of green,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey lot of green.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But this does not fit my narrative, so you are booted off the podcast. I’m not saying it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, think of any place you’ve ever worked, Casey. Have you had this much documentation
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey for your public
⏹️ ▶️ Casey APIs? Oh, God, no. Absolutely not. However, I was not vending a public API for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hundreds of thousands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John of developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have vended a public API, and we haven’t done this well. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey anyway, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously, all that matters is what your framework is. You don’t care that they have 100% coverage and
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, like intense UI or something like that. If you’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John audio frameworks and they’re in the red, that’s your whole life. In fact, if you’re using one particular subset
⏹️ ▶️ John of one library and there’s no docs, that’s worse. Everything could be green except
⏹️ ▶️ John for your one little corner of the library, and you still paid Apple for not having the docs. So yes, the bar should be higher for
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, because they have a lot of money. And in theory, documentation is
⏹️ ▶️ John parallelizable and can be done with
⏹️ ▶️ John less investment in long-term mental energy than
⏹️ ▶️ John something like designing the frameworks to begin with. One would hope.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, like it’d be one thing if this was like all the new stuff they happen to release in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 13 and they haven’t quite had enough time to get to it yet and they’ll get to it in the next six months. But no, that isn’t it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s inexcusable too. I take your point and I do agree with you, but that is also inexcusable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, but that isn’t even it. It’s even worse than that. A lot of these frameworks are five or 10 years old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they haven’t been documented over that entire time. And it seems like they’re, I think what bothers me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it is that, not only what John said about, it’s not like they’re so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco constrained with all their resources that they can’t hire people to do this or task people to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. This is something that can be easily outsourced or tasked to other teams and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solve this, you just need the will and some resources. Which they have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resources, I guess they don’t have the will. But I think what bothers me is like, enough about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s message to developers over the last few months has been crappy. This is just kind of insult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upon injury. Like, it’s bad enough that all the platforms that are shipping to customers right now are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco causing so many problems for developers and customers because they’re still so buggy and it was such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a rough beta season. and doing the early public beta really was a jerk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move by Apple to both their customers and their developers. Launching Catalina without notifying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any developers ahead of time when it was gonna happen was really a jerk move to all Mac developers too. Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just, this has been like not a great season to be a developer in Apple’s world right now. And to add
⏹️ ▶️ Marco insult upon injury is like, yeah, you know what, none of this stuff seems documented and it also seems like based on how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long some of these things go without being documented, it seems like Apple thinks this is fine, they don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple thinks this is good enough. And that I think is what I hope that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco websites like this will help convince them differently on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but that’s the thing is that I don’t know that Apple thinks this is good enough internally, but I agree with you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that because there is nothing spoken about externally, this is all we have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go on. And so by Apple releasing iOS 13
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and all these new APIs, and to your point, leaving alone all the APIs from many, many versions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago and not having proper documentation about it, that is them saying that this is good enough. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do agree with you, but I’m waiting for all the internal Apple people to be like, well, guys, come on, we don’t think this is good enough, but, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Well, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, look, but like, look, go up the chain then, right? Like someone on Apple thinks this is good enough. You know, like you can keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going. It’s like, okay, maybe you, individual engineer, are unhappy with this. Great. How does your boss feel about it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are they unhappy with it? Okay, how does their boss feel about it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you hit Tim Cook, right? Like it’s somebody’s problem. Somebody needs to care about this kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you or your boss care, but can’t get things done,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, why? Why can’t this be improved? Go a level up, go to that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next person. Why can’t this be improved? The company has seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco infinite money. I know it’s hard to hire for certain things. I know it’s hard to scale certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. But this is one of those things that’s actually a lot easier to hire for and scale than a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of other engineering challenges, right? This really is way closer to like, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what, you can just choose to allocate resources to this and get it done. Like that’s, not everything in the company works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that way, but this is one of the things that works a lot more that way than everything else. So the fact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, they don’t think it’s important. Someone, somewhere up the chain, has decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this doesn’t matter. And so that’s why I hope things like this website can kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of help push that on the people who might be hearing and reading about this kind
⏹️ ▶️ John If done well, hiring more people to document libraries can actually be
⏹️ ▶️ John a funnel into helping with your engineering scalability problems. It’s not to say that most
⏹️ ▶️ John people want to start by doing documentation to become programmers. But
⏹️ ▶️ John some people who start in documentation never really thinking that they’re going to be a programmer
⏹️ ▶️ John will end up realizing that they have an aptitude for it. that’s like kind of a farm team
⏹️ ▶️ John for your larger engineering org. And again, that’s not to say that there’s 100% overlap between
⏹️ ▶️ John those skill sets. People can be very good at documentation, not very good at coding, and vice versa. But I think there
⏹️ ▶️ John will be at least some people who start off documenting. And if your documentation team is
⏹️ ▶️ John respected and paid well and expected
⏹️ ▶️ John to either know or understand the fundamentals of API design,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can find themselves in a position where, guess what? After a year or two in this job, you know an awful lot about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s APIs. And if you didn’t know how to program before or in this particular language before, you
⏹️ ▶️ John probably almost know how to do it now. And so you’re perfectly positioned to transition from documentation
⏹️ ▶️ John into the larger engineering org. And vice versa. Again, if you pay the documentation people well
⏹️ ▶️ John and respect their position and have a path for advancement, you can see people going in the opposite direction. Lots of the
⏹️ ▶️ John early Apple employees are justifiably famous not because they wrote Quickdraw
⏹️ ▶️ John or created Switcher or whatever all the engineering feats of the original Mac team and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John but because they wrote amazing documentation for the Apple II or for the Macintosh and
⏹️ ▶️ John they weren’t lugged down upon. It’s like, well, you didn’t write the code. All you did was write the documentation. Yeah, but the documentation was amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John and amazing documentation was part of the reason, of the way the
⏹️ ▶️ John good qualities of Apple’s products were communicated to developers to let them know, you
⏹️ ▶️ John want to develop for this platform, isn’t it cool? And here, let me explain it to you, explain our
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking behind it, explain how things work, explain how it works together, so you appreciate the beauty of whatever system
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve made. That was an essential part of both the Apple II and the early Macintosh in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John gaining market share. Not that iOS is in that position now, but it’s always a good thing to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and also I feel like at this point, when not only, you know, APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are broadening and changing at a crazy pace right now, they introduced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an entirely new programming language five years ago, whenever that was everything converted over to that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that language has changed in that time. Some of the original, you know, old sample code doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work anymore. A lot of APIs and things don’t have sample code in the new language. and now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re trying to also change the entire UI framework? This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a time when we desperately need great documentation, great sample
⏹️ ▶️ Marco code, great tutorials. We need Apple writing their own code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco against these new APIs and sharing it with us. We need there to never be anything we run into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that says no overview available in the new frameworks and new languages we’re supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be using now. this is an incredibly critical time that they’re trying to really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move things forward in some pretty big ways and there seems to be no guidance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on how to use any of this new stuff. Are they ever going to document any of this stuff? Are they ever going to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good documentation for SwiftUI, for instance? I don’t know, but right now they don’t, and they’re asking us all to learn it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t know what they expect us to do exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John One way to highlight the problems with this methodology is to look at something like the kernel,
⏹️ ▶️ John where they have like 28,000 symbols, only 2,000 of which are documented, but there’s probably almost nothing in the kernel that you’re supposed to call
⏹️ ▶️ John directly. Like Apple has been really tightening down the public interface to the kernel.
⏹️ ▶️ John Kernel extensions themselves are so incredibly locked down.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now they’re basically frowned upon, period, and they have the whole user space driver thing, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s always, you know, the kernel line on this graph is always gonna be a tiny little dot. There’s actually a one with zero
⏹️ ▶️ John as well, and I’m not sure about that one. I owe USB hosts. But anyway, this is all to say
⏹️ ▶️ John that third parties doing this is all well and good. But one way Apple can address this
⏹️ ▶️ John problem, start addressing this problem, is by coming up with their own metrics. Because they
⏹️ ▶️ John know, in theory, which APIs are supposed to be public and which aren’t. I mean, they certainly know, because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure the tools that they run against your App Store submissions know, because if you call a private one, they’re going to reject your app,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So at the very least, they know, OK, this kernel percentage is way off.
⏹️ ▶️ John It says 8%, but they don’t realize that almost all those symbols are private. For all we know, the kernel has a hundred percent
⏹️ ▶️ John documentation, but Apple knows, right? So they should put on every one of their frameworks and every one of their pages, a little bar
⏹️ ▶️ John like this, this is what percent is documented because if they can see it internally and they’re willing to show it to the
⏹️ ▶️ John world, that will hopefully motivate slash shame them into making those metrics
⏹️ ▶️ John go up, you know, make it part of people’s goals, put it on, you know, however you need to motivate the organization. But especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re willing to put a public face in it so that every time someone goes to a particular library, they see
⏹️ ▶️ John this library, this framework is X percent documented it like maybe with a date on it. The last time
⏹️ ▶️ John that you know, hit this so you can historically see a graph of percentage and then you have actionable data
⏹️ ▶️ John from Apple itself to say, Hey, this library has been 42% documented for the past five years.
⏹️ ▶️ John What the hell? Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But we don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John any of that. So all we’ve got is third party websites like this, which, which are a start, but really Apple should be doing
⏹️ ▶️ John this internally and should be brave enough, courage, to put
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this on their docs and show it to the outside world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Agreed. And a real-time follow-up, there is, in the GitHub repo, a brief about the methodology.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll read a portion of it. This project uses a scraper to crawl and download API symbol documentation from Apple’s official documentation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey website. An API symbol is any page navigable from and within developer.apple.com slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey documentation that has a declaration, i.e. articles and sample code are not counted. An API symbol is undocumented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if an HTML element matches selector, no documentation, the class, no documentation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s the methodology. It is clearly not flawless nor foolproof, but as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a reasonably consistent first step, I don’t think it’s unreasonable. ______ They
⏹️ ▶️ John could post their test coverage too on the pages. That would be scary. ______ Oh, that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s the thing, though. I used to work at a government contractor many, many moons ago, and we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were using the rational suite, which was was awful in a million different ways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it made sense given the context. And what that meant was I couldn’t check in code unless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I specifically in the tools associated it with a issue number or ticket or what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have you that that change was for. And they could have, although I don’t recall this being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the case, they could have gone to the level of not allowing me to check in code unless there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey code coverage on that new code. And I could have not been able to check
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in code if I didn’t have documentation coverage against that new code. Like, big businesses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they take this stuff this seriously, this is a solvable problem, which is exactly what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you two have been saying. Like, if Apple really did care about this, this would get solved. But the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, whether or not the rank and file care, I could not agree with you more, Marco. Someone, somewhere does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care enough to make this a priority. And that’s just one more reason why, again, to quote you, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This season of being an Apple developer has really just not been fun.
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16” MBP imminent?
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is October as we record, it is the 21st of October, and we have yet to hear about the October event that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess isn’t happening. What’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John All the rumors say we’re getting a 16 inch MacBook Pro with a hardware escape key and scissor switch
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard. any day now. Yeah, I put this item in here and there was a one word item, but
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey exactly picked up on what I was getting at. The one word says just October. It’s the 21st. This
⏹️ ▶️ John episode will come out on the 23rd or whatever. There’s, you know, I know Apple doesn’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John to give a lot of notice and they can have an event in early November, but I really do hope before
⏹️ ▶️ John the end of the year, obviously a, they put out the Mac pro configurator, but be
⏹️ ▶️ John inch MacBook pro with a new keyboard. Uh, you know, if, if you don’t want to have an event
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple and you just want to do a private press thing, whatever, we just want the machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I originally thought, like, you know, weeks ago when we were trying to predict this, I thought, well, you know, would they really introduce like a brand new laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without demoing it, like in a public way? That leaked alleged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco image is in 10.15.1 beta, right? Whatever it is. Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was all over the rumor sites a few years ago. It’s one of those, like, you know, rendered icons that like you see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you like it like where where the system has to show an icon for a certain Apple device and it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like these like stock these like stock icon images of every Apple device every model and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it shows in things like the about window or in like connecting to network share stuff like that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this image resource that claims to be the MacBook Pro 16-inch and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by various conventions and by looking at it next to the other one it does seem like that’s very likely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it appears that we have Apple’s Apple’s official rendering of this device from the front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there was this helpful little animated GIF on the Mac rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco post in the comment section I’ll put it in the show notes by user Stanley dot ok
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that shows you can very quickly see them compared like the old the old 15 inch the new 15 inch and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can tell that you know the the 16 inch one is clearly you know a bigger screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller bezels Proportionally to the screen and you can tell there’s a very very very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slight difference on the keyboard at the top where it does appear as Though there is a hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco escape key to the left of the touch bar and a separated power button to the right of the touch Bar,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but what’s interesting is how little else appears different? they appear to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very very similar and And so I’m not sure Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really going to want to very loudly announce this is a brand new laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s all the complicated reasons with the keyboard issues they’ve had. They might actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to downplay this a little bit. They might actually just be like, here’s our new 16-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro. And not much else about it might be changed besides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen proportion and that it now has a scissor switch keyboard. It wouldn’t surprise me if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has like all the same ports if It looks like from the from this image looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like the trackpad Area which many people thought was too large and it got in the way of your thumbs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and because accidentally accidental input That appears to be unchanged by this image the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spacing between the keys Which I’ve always said because it got smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the butterfly keeper generation It actually made it harder to feel where the keycaps ended
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and therefore Or I think that’s part of what made me less accurate of a typist on these new keyboards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That appears to be unchanged as well. The distance that the keys appear to be raised
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up from the bed they sit on also appears unchanged in this image.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, granted, this is not a super high resolution image of the keyboard itself, and it’s also a marketing image
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, so it’s sanitized probably in certain ways, but this doesn’t look like it’s that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different of a laptop from the 15-inch that we’ve had for for three years. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco therefore, I’m guessing that, combine that with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the embarrassing and legally problematic keyboard problems Apple has had,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might just downplay it. They might just be like, hey, here’s the new update. Have a few briefings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here and there, and do a big press release. Some YouTubers have them do some rendering tests
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, and that might be it. Because they might just wanna get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this out there and quietly start solving the keyboard problem. And if not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much else has changed, there actually isn’t that much more for them to have an event about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we kept thinking, you know, beyond the 16-inch MacBook Pro, we’ve been trying to figure out for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while in the rumor mill, like, okay, well, if they had an event, what else would be in the event? Is it just this new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop? That seems like they wouldn’t have a whole event just for that, especially if it’s, you know, not a huge revision.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, okay, what else is there? iPad Pros have been pretty definitively ruled out by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rumor mill for like, you know, not this fall. Other laptops also ruled out, probably not this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fall. So we’re basically left with like the possible AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the squishy tips and the possible noise cancellation that we talked about last week. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alleged like a tile tracker thing that uses the ultra wide band chip and maybe a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HomePod update. Like it seems like there’s not quite enough there. And if you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back to this past spring, Apple in the span of a week had, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four product releases all done by press releases, like one each day. They had like the new iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini and the newish iPad Air at the time. And then they had, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe that was when, was that when new AirPods came out? I forget when that, anyway. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this past spring, they had like a few days in a row where they had press releases for just a few product releases and that was it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They might just be doing the same thing this fall. Like they might just have, you know, press release for this, maybe a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days or a week later they might have, hey, here’s AirPods with in-ear tips. These
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might not be major event-worthy things.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, like many of their icons they have in the OS, I’m assuming these aren’t actually photos but are just renders.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re not even like, a lot of things at Apple’s websites are renders, but the icons tend to be renders that
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t even meant to be photorealistic. They’re a little bit iconic, if that makes sense, like a little bit painterly.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it wouldn’t actually surprise me if like 3D models that they just copied and pasted the keyboard, like that’s why they look the
⏹️ ▶️ John other words, I’m not willing to believe that the, all the rumors say
⏹️ ▶️ John that these have more travel distance, but they don’t stick up anymore because this is a rendering and they
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t bother with that. But they did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John buy a separate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. I would bet against that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John John. I would bet, because the reason why- Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John and thus, there was a rumor that they have more travel than they have twice the travel of the previous ones, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like one millimeter keyboard versus 0.5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they call this one millimeter keyboard, and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Butterfly has about 0.5 millimeters of travel, and this is allegedly a scissor mechanism and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was hoping for more, it’s hard to tell whether you have inverted T arrows or not. You can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John tell from this. Oh, no, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think that’s changed, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, it looks like almost nothing else has changed, and I think a lot of our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perception of Apple is resting on this laptop release. Like, they’re gonna communicate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole lot to us with this. And what they might be communicating to us is, we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do the least amount of change possible to alleviate the issue that’s hurting them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not us. Like, users have had lots of issues with this generation of laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Many people want a no-touch bar option. Many people are not happy with the trackpad size.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Many people are unhappy with the ports being so limited. Many people are unhappy with losing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SD card. Like, there’s so many things, so many things on this laptop have really polarized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and angered and lost people, or cost them a lot of money, or made things worse for them. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, so far to date, has changed almost nothing about them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since their introduction in 2016. Almost nothing has been changed. Apple has seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be doing the bare minimum possible for these last few years to just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eke out a little bit more out of this. And as a Mac person, obviously, this has bothered the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crap out of me. Everyone listening to this show knows that. This has bothered the crap, because this generational laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has just felt punitive. It has just felt like Apple hates us. They hate Macs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they hate us, they hate these laptops, and they hate everything that we like about them. That’s how it has seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to their customers. And they have just done little Band-Aid after little Band-Aid after little Band-Aid over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and over again to just get least change possible with this. And you know, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said last year, like when you compare this to what’s going on with the iPad line, like look at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad pro. The iPad pro is fantastic. Like every time they touch that, it gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much better. And it seemed like they’re, they’re just like showering iPad pro users
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with like awesome advances all the time. You know, it’s like a gift every year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s or every 18 months, whatever. It’s like a gift of look how much better the iPad pro And on the Mac side, it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we hate you. Stop using these.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how it feels. Like, to be a Mac laptop owner for the last four years, that’s how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it feels. It feels like they hate us, honestly. It feels like they don’t like these machines.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t want to be using them. They don’t want us to be using them. They hate everything good about them. They hate that they’re versatile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers. Like, honestly, it feels like they hate these machines. Right? It matters so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what direction they’ve chosen to take with the new 16-inch. This is going to be the first totally new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware design since 2016. What have they done? Have they only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changed the keyboard to a scissor mechanism which will only fix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of issues with it? Or have they taken a more holistic approach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to actually fixing a lot of the other problems people have with it? So is it only to fix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem that was costing them a lot of money and causing lawsuits? Or are they actually making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a product that their customers are gonna love? That’s the big question. That’s why so much is riding
⏹️ ▶️ John I Hope you feel better, but I was just talking about the keyboard You said that the keyboard didn’t look
⏹️ ▶️ John like they were any higher in the picture and I was saying it’s just a render even though The keys and the
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard don’t look like they’re any higher. There will be twice as much travel I agree with you on everything else
⏹️ ▶️ John though I totally believe that the trackpad is gonna be the same size that the key layout is gonna be the same you know, thing
⏹️ ▶️ John as it was before with a slave to symmetry with annoying arrow keys. I agree that all the ports are gonna be the
⏹️ ▶️ John same. Like, it’s that much, I’ve never, you know, as I said, I think several shows ago,
⏹️ ▶️ John all I want is a new keyboard and one more port and we’re gonna get one of those things. It’s gonna be the keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, part of it also looking at these images is kind of the design corner they’ve painted themselves into
⏹️ ▶️ John in that aside from better key layout and more ports, they have to make
⏹️ ▶️ John some different decisions about just the overall design if they wanna do anything else
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting with these laptops. Even something as simple as the long, long overdue face
⏹️ ▶️ John ID on a Mac, you know, in theory, given the size of the bezels and
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumored face ID hardware that’s not going to require a notch on the next iPhone, they could
⏹️ ▶️ John sneak those into a laptop style form factor, maybe, or maybe put them someplace else.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like there are things you can do to innovate laptop design to incorporate
⏹️ ▶️ John more features than Apple has wanted to. And based on these drawings and based on what we all expected, this is not that
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop. Like it’s almost like they took how many years, three, three
⏹️ ▶️ John years, three and a half years. So it’s like three and a half years to to apply a bandaid where we don’t want to call
⏹️ ▶️ John it that because there have been so many band-aids between like all the different revisions to that keyboard. But this
⏹️ ▶️ John is looks a lot like that previous keyboard. Like imagine this if this laptop came
⏹️ ▶️ John out after the first bad butterfly keyboard. It would be like, well, they didn’t have time to redesign the whole laptop. All
⏹️ ▶️ John they could do is replace the keyboard and that required a bit of a redesign. So here it is. But instead we got to wait three
⏹️ ▶️ John years for what is essentially we haven’t changed our philosophy of this product. We haven’t changed the product design.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve just changed the component part. So the screen is better and bigger, um, a little bit bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, and the keyboard isn’t crappy anymore, but every other sort of design decision about this laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John remains the same, at least as far as we can tell in this picture. Now Now, that said, as
⏹️ ▶️ John a laptop hater, I hate all laptops, not just the Apple ones, one thing that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John do in a laptop design, even if you don’t sort of change any of the things that we’ve discussed,
⏹️ ▶️ John that can have a big effect on how people feel about the laptop is all the stuff that’s hidden on the inside.
⏹️ ▶️ John So in particular, cooling and packaging. Like, if you can
⏹️ ▶️ John figure out how to sort of iMac Pro this thing, like, oh, it’s the same size and shape case as
⏹️ ▶️ John it was before, But compare the sort of experience of using a 5K iMac
⏹️ ▶️ John and the experience of using an iMac Pro. Outside they look the same except one is darker. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you love the iMac Pro because it’s quiet and it cools the parts and the parts inside
⏹️ ▶️ John are faster. If you could do that with this one where externally it looks more or less the same, it’s a flat
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop, you know, they all kind of look the same. The screen is bigger. But boy, this one never overheats.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this one doesn’t throttle down under speed or this one I never hear the fan spin up. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John is a significant sort of quality of life improvement, even if you’re going to continue to
⏹️ ▶️ John be stingy with ports and have a bad keyboard layout, yada yada yada. Can’t tell that from a render,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, it might just be wishful thinking because there’s a lot less room to work in a laptop than otherwise,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think the iMac Pro shows that it is possible if, you know, if we get lucky
⏹️ ▶️ John and if Apple is inspired to take an existing form factor and basically make a better computer
⏹️ ▶️ John inside more or less the same design. And this case actually is bigger. Like if you hold it next to it, it’s not just
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen that’s bigger. The actual, you know, thing that holds the battery and the CPU and all
⏹️ ▶️ John that stuff also looks a little bit bigger. So maybe there is more room to do cooling. So if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to get your hopes up, don’t get your hopes up about ports. Don’t get your hopes up about key layout. Don’t get your
⏹️ ▶️ John hopes up about face ID. That’s for sure. But maybe best case scenario, you can get your hopes up about
⏹️ ▶️ John cooling and NVH as say in the auto industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. Something I’ve been thinking about a little bit lately is what is Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of long-term plan with their computers? Because if you look at both the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac line and the MacBook Pro line, as you guys have mentioned, they’re all getting a bit long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the tooth design-wise. And I can’t decide if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s a problem or not because, I exchanged just a couple of tweets with Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Trout and Smith, and he was saying, in so many words, and I’m probably painting it unfairly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but what I heard him say, whether or not he actually said it, was, you know, Apple’s laptop line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is boring and they’re not trying anymore. And I can’t decide if he’s right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they should be trying new and clever things, or if it’s that they have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey realized what they believe to be the naked robotic core of computing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they just don’t feel like there’s anything else to do. You know, if you look at a computer, it’s generally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a mouse, a keyboard and a screen and be that an iMac or be that a MacBook pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they may have reached what is almost peak, you know, keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitor and mouse. And am I okay with that? And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to go back and forth with Steve about it. And I guess I could have privately, but, um, I didn’t want to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t want all the drive-bys on Twitter, But a lot of the stuff like the Surface line, you know, Steve had cited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as something that’s really exciting to him. And I don’t know, I just, I don’t find myself getting really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited about new and different takes on keyboard, mouse, and monitor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe I’m, maybe I’m old, maybe I’m boring, maybe both. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I necessarily want like a grand revamp of a MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or an iMac. Like I’m, I’m okay with the design. Yeah. I’d like smaller bezels. Yes. I’d like face ID,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t know. Am I being crazy? Is it silly to kind of be okay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the general gist of what we’ve got?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that’s not crazy at all. The reason why we are pretty much okay with our iMacs looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same for a pretty long time is because it’s fine. They actually work really well the way, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, this way and they don’t look as, you know, modern and cool as they might, you know, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like smaller puzzles, you said, but like, it’s not like a problem that’s really a big deal to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us. Like I don’t like I look at our iMac every single day and I noticed the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bezel almost never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I look at the you know the big chin on the bottom almost never because there’s a giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bright glowing screen in the middle that’s taking all of my attention. I don’t need to look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the at the case of my iMac very often. I don’t see it. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handle it or touch it or move it very often. Although I’ve moved more than most most people do, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a fact. But like, you know, so like it doesn’t, it’s not a thing that’s really a critical part of the experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of owning this computer. Like the way like the iMac looks is fine. It’s totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ignorable and asking them to redesign the iMac is kind of like asking them to redesign like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the power brick of a laptop. It’s like, yeah, you know, it’s a thing, it’s part of using it, but like it’s not a huge deal,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Well, I agree that it’s in a good place compared to laptops, but the iMac,
⏹️ ▶️ John not the case so much, but the stand. The stand is ripe for improvement and Apple has been
⏹️ ▶️ John known to do some interesting innovations in the stand area. If it was height adjustable
⏹️ ▶️ John and could rotate, that would be a better iMac. And again, I’m not comparing it to laptops which
⏹️ ▶️ John are in much worse place. The iMac is fine and it’s been fine for seven years. I don’t think it’s desperately dying
⏹️ ▶️ John to be redesigned, but if you wanted to redesign it, if you made it adjustable
⏹️ ▶️ John height, adjustable angle and rotatable, no one’s gonna frown at that iMac. that would be awesome. Keep all the
⏹️ ▶️ John good things about it and make the one part of it even better. So there is definitely room for
⏹️ ▶️ John improvement on the iMac. It’s just that the current one, especially the iMac Pro, is really good.
⏹️ ▶️ John So no one is dying for that change to happen, but I do think about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true, although the problem is now we do know that if they did that, they would charge an extra $1,000 for it. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna make it, don’t make the iMac one out of unobtainium or whatever the hell.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, but like. XDR. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the iMac is obviously, it’s fine. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a design that doesn’t get in the way. Whereas the laptops have so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems. There are so many shortcomings and incredibly polarizing or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unreliable things or limiting things. That’s why people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that laptop innovation is over aren’t looking at it enough or aren’t trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very hard to think about how could this be better or how could this be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brought forward? There are so many ways that laptops can get better. Look at what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire rest of the industry is doing. Apple doesn’t make the best laptops anymore. They simply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t. If you look at the PC world, especially what Microsoft is doing, again, we made fun of them a long time ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when their weird laptops and Surface things sucked, but they don’t anymore. Now they’re pretty good and people like them a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot and they sell a pretty good number of them now and they are objectively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good by many people’s measures and many people’s experiences. You know, I’m not saying that Apple needs to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as many crazy bets as Microsoft does, but I would like them to try.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would like them to not have stopped trying. The impression I’ve gotten since the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Touch Bar introduction you know, in 2016, is like, that was their big try and then they just stopped.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that wasn’t that big or that good of a try. We haven’t seen yet what this new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is. I sure hope John is right that this image is not incredibly detailed or accurate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I fear that it is. I fear that this is literally all they have for us.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s accurate, you just can’t see the sides so you could continue to fantasize that there’s more ports there. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco proportion-wise
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything else about it, I think the trackpad will be the size they show, I think the overall laptop will be the size, and I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John key layout will be the way they show it. I just think there’ll be twice as much travel and there’ll be scissor switches,
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe this game will be a little bit brighter. Like I think what they need in the laptop line is they need their Mac Pro moment. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John they need to make one model of their laptops that has more ports and is more versatile.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I don’t know what the equivalent of the Mac Pro is, but like the Mac Pro, like as compared to the
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac Pro, first of all, they’re starting off with the iMac Pro, which is itself a great computer, but the Mac Pro was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, how can I, we talked about this so many times before the computer came out,
⏹️ ▶️ John what can we use to justify the Mac Pro when the iMac Pro exists. And they have plenty of answers. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s ridiculous things the Mac Pro does that the iMac can’t even imagine, like in terms of expandability,
⏹️ ▶️ John and yes, also cost and stuff like that. There’s no equivalent to that in the laptop line.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they just innovated in that direction, I feel like that could be their sort of laptop halo car
⏹️ ▶️ John where they could try a ridiculous expensive laptop that is hugely versatile in the same way that the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro is hugely versatile. Hell, make it hugely expensive. Probably can’t literally make it huge
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not a good quality
⏹️ ▶️ John in a laptop, but you could make it a little bit bigger. And experimenting with that very expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ John very versatile, very powerful laptop, again, there are lots of examples of this in the PC world, gaming laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John and other, like laptops made for versatility and performance that seem weird
⏹️ ▶️ John and obscene, but I guarantee you that if there’s a market for the Mac Pro at all, there’s a market for a,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s call it a MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Maybe they’ll have to come up with a new name.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by doing that, it would be an interesting test bed to see like if they start driving people up market and like no
⏹️ ▶️ John one buys the regular MacBook Pro, they all buy the MacBook Pro XDR or whatever the hell
⏹️ ▶️ John it, it would show them, hey, maybe if we put an SD card slot in our supposed MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, I don’t know what the market is asking for. Is it key layout? Is it ditching the touch bar for something else?
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s clear that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with the current sort of design trend and all the
⏹️ ▶️ John way up and down the line, even though one of them’s called the MacBook Air and they used to have a thing called a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John and the MacBook Pros, and even though they have this differentiation in price
⏹️ ▶️ John and in the chips they use in them, in general, the design makes very similar decisions,
⏹️ ▶️ John right down to my original complaint when they went to aluminum is they use the same freaking keyboard no matter how big the
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop is. The same keyboard, the same key layout, pretty much the same complement of ports, you just decrease
⏹️ ▶️ John the number as the prices go down. It’s getting very samey and there’s not a lot of differentiation. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if they had a Mac Pro moment and went and said, we’ve heard you, we’re gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ John a versatile laptop for pros. I don’t know how they would phrase this. I think they could learn a lot from
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Maybe they’d learn that we’re wrong and really nobody wants that laptop except for people on nerdy
⏹️ ▶️ John tech podcasts, fine. But, you know, I don’t know, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re still living in a tech nerd bubble, but I don’t hear lots of people who are super duper in love with their MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John over the past few years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is, actually, I don’t, a hilarious idea. So I realized this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be the last episode of this show that gets recorded and released before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this new laptop is unveiled. And I thought, when this happens to iPhones, we usually have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an exit interview. Oh God,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey no, please no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I realized we don’t need to do an exit interview for this current generation of MacBook Pros. The entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last three years of our show have been the exit interview for these MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pros. Exit interview slash funeral.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh God, I hope, I hope this is it. I hope this is the end of this horrible era.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, like, you know, not to make a political analogy, but like you kind of feel like, boy, you made a lot of mistakes over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few years. Like let’s hope the world is coming out of things. Right. And like, this is just part of that for me. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just want to end this era and be able to look back on it and make jokes without them being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so painful because it’s still our present day.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And honestly, you said like, oh, they’re just fixing the thing that’s painful. fixing the keyboard is a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s gonna really, really help in ways that it might make you feel better about the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that the ports haven’t changed. Because you’re like, well, the ports annoy me, but I’ve already got my dongles.
⏹️ ▶️ John The screen is bigger and nicer, and every time I type on a key, it makes the key that it’s, it makes the character that
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s supposed to make.
⏹️ ▶️ John will go a long way to making everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a lot less bitter. I
⏹️ ▶️ John say as someone who has just recently had to pull down a Bluetooth keyboard from the attic because my
⏹️ ▶️ John space bar on my work laptop is going wonky and I don’t wanna be without it long enough to get it replaced,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I am using a second keyboard on my MacBook Pro. You know, it’s only a small percentage of customers, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s killing me, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a small percentage, it’s just everybody we know. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just feel like I can, and now I know why people pry the key gaps off,
⏹️ ▶️ John because I so wanna pry it, because you just feel it, you’re like, it’s a crumb, I can feel it under my thumb,
⏹️ ▶️ John get out! Like the key doesn’t go down all the way, And the worst part is, if I bang it,
⏹️ ▶️ John like every four bangs on the space bar with my thumb, it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco make a space. So it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to make it like, you can’t, I can use it. I don’t have to like copy and paste the space.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’s the worst. And then I took out my, like my ancient Bluetooth Apple keyboard with the, it takes
⏹️ ▶️ John the AA batteries. And those keys have so much travel.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. It’s like, I feel like I’m. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels like a model M by comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think they’re supposed to, Basically, I think they’re the same key mechanisms as the one that I’m using on my
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro right now. Like I have the Apple Extended. I think they’re the same key mechanisms, but I guess the Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John one isn’t sort of like broken in and it feels so much stiffer. And it makes me realize
⏹️ ▶️ John like Casey, I think, I actually have come around to liking the butterfly key mechanism,
⏹️ ▶️ John limited travel and all in the context of a laptop. I thought we were friends. Maybe not that extreme. Like I could use
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit more travel. I still hate the key layout and I still hate the reliability, right? but I don’t mind
⏹️ ▶️ John the lower travel clicky keys in a laptop context. I probably wouldn’t want to use it on a desktop,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t mind it. So like I’m all primed to really like
⏹️ ▶️ John the key mechanism in this new laptop, even as I continue to dislike the key layout.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I generally speaking, I really do like my MacBook Adorable. It annoys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me from time to time. There are a few simple ways it could be an almost perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer. I don’t think I have nearly the hatred that either of you do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the modern Apple laptops, but I’ve never owned a Touch Bar laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never had the occasion to, I’ve never really used one for more than a few minutes at a time. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t yet been really catastrophically burned by the keyboard. I’ve only been annoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by it, but I don’t debate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that- You’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco failures all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, but it’s always- It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fixed by compressed air
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey though. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John get access to his dad’s air compressor or something because my little canned air is not doing the job on this space bar.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, the MacBook Air, the one I actually own, that one does two spaces. For the longest time when I was
⏹️ ▶️ John helping my kids proofread their little essays for school, I’m like, why are you putting two spaces in the middle of sentences? They’re like, the
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard just does that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And I tried it and they’re right.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re right, the keyboard does just do that. So I guess it’s better than not being able to make a space. But yeah, when they write
⏹️ ▶️ John all their papers up in Google Docs on the quote unquote homework laptop, sometimes they get
⏹️ ▶️ John double spaces between words because they hit the spacebar once and two come out.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s some new Google stuff, I guess. Cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John any of these products? So I thought those I watched most of the Google thing as I usually do.
⏹️ ▶️ John and I put a picture in our notes document here. We’ll link to the TechCrunch
⏹️ ▶️ John story this picture comes from. It’s a Google PR picture they gave out to everybody. And it got me thinking.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve talked about Microsoft and their various hardware products in a couple of recent shows, and here’s Google.
⏹️ ▶️ John Their announcement was like they have a new, it’s about their new phones. They have a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John AirPod ripoff things. They’re little wireless earbuds that come in a little case.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ve got a bunch of HomePod looking things, sort of fabric colored cylinders that
⏹️ ▶️ John are, you know, augmenting their existing Google Home line. They’ve combined their Wi-Fi routers
⏹️ ▶️ John into the Google Home thing. So the thing that you talk to is also your router, which is a smart
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that Apple should have done if they didn’t get out of the Wi-Fi router business. We talked about it a lot when we were discussing
⏹️ ▶️ John them getting out of the business. Like hey, you want to have things in the house to listen to you. That’s a great
⏹️ ▶️ John place to put your router. And then of course they have the Google Stadia controller, you know, gaming,
⏹️ ▶️ John streaming gaming thing. this little product shot that shows everything together. And if you look at
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon, Google, and Apple, three big tech companies,
⏹️ ▶️ John all of them can make a picture like this. Pretty much, I mean, Amazon doesn’t have a laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they do have, still have those fire tablets, right? Do they still make those tablets? I forget.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, they cost like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing. They’re like 30 bucks now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, and I guess Amazon did have the phone, but didn’t have it, but like, Cylinders that you can talk
⏹️ ▶️ John to and fun colors covered with fabric Wi-Fi routers, you know, Amazon’s got a hero
⏹️ ▶️ John now, right? earbuds Amazon even has like a ring that you can talk to like
⏹️ ▶️ John a literal ring for your fingers Phone tablets gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John controller things TV connected boxes Like it seems like those
⏹️ ▶️ John not that that’s table stakes, but like every large tech company There aren’t many of them But the big three or four
⏹️ ▶️ John big temp companies are all looking at what the other tech companies are doing and like, we should make earbuds. We
⏹️ ▶️ John should have a voice assistant. We should have cylinders that are in your house. We should have a home automation.
⏹️ ▶️ John We should have a thing that plays music. We should have a streaming service. And you know, the competition, similarity
⏹️ ▶️ John in services that they all make. And in particular, this image from Google, all
⏹️ ▶️ John of them seem to be taking the aesthetic from Apple, which is not new. Apple has sort of led in design.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whatever Apple decides they’re going to do, you’ll see lots of competitors copying, which
⏹️ ▶️ John at many times, like, well, what do you expect? That’s obviously the way things should be, but it’s only
⏹️ ▶️ John like that in hindsight. It was not obvious that cell phones should look like the iPhone until the iPhone came. Cell phones looked
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing like the iPhone before, even complete screen iPhones, like Nokia had phones that were all screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John they did not look and work like the iPhone. But after the iPhone, every freaking phone looks like an iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And down to the aesthetic. Uh, laptops being, you know, aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ John and glass and sort of an unfinished aluminum appearance swept across the industry. And now I’m not sure if
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple was in the lead here or following, but there’s a similar trend for cylinders. Obviously, Amazon being
⏹️ ▶️ John the leader in the having cylinders that you talk to in your house, but the design aesthetic of sort of rounded marshmallow
⏹️ ▶️ John fabric covered things, whoever did that first, that is now everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, Amazon cylinders are fabric covered. Googles are practically little miniature HomePod marshmallows.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they have the Google Home Mini because they want them to look nice. They don’t want them to look too techie, but they also don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to look like furniture. Like they’re not made of shag carpet. Like there is a sameness, a similar,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then the AirPods, the great example, like there were wireless earbuds before the AirPods and they were going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be wireless earbuds after them. But there’s no way you can look at this Google thing and say, Oh, that’s their AirPod competitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like is, well isn’t it obvious that you’d have a little case with the lid to pop? No, that’s not obvious. Look at all the ones that came
⏹️ ▶️ John out before AirPods. They didn’t work or look like that. Even if they had a little charging case, it wasn’t exactly like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But in a post-AirPod world, they all have to be exactly like that. Now, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not saying all this to say, oh, look, everyone copies Apple, though, again, I feel like they do really set the direction for
⏹️ ▶️ John the industry. But what it made me think was these three
⏹️ ▶️ John other companies that I’m talking about, and by the way, I’m gonna give Microsoft a break here because Microsoft actually has its
⏹️ ▶️ John own aesthetic. I think it’s not as nice an aesthetic, but they have their own thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Their Surface stuff. This thing is like cubicle wall. Aw. But I mean, there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit of sameness. Like if you look at Microsoft’s keyboards, that is inspired by Apple’s keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ John very much. But they do have their own sort of design aesthetic for their big Surface Pro thing and for
⏹️ ▶️ John their Surface things with the kickstands. Like they have a little bit of their own thing. They’re influenced by the fashion of the rest of the
⏹️ ▶️ John industry, but they are the most innovative and the most original, I feel like. So they definitely deserve
⏹️ ▶️ John credit for that. But here’s where, you know, the episode where we’re bashing
⏹️ ▶️ John an apple, but it’s like, this is not a thing to bash an apple about, but it’s a thing that I think about. All those
⏹️ ▶️ John other companies have some other big thing that they do that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John known for. Google is Google search. Like when you say Google, people
⏹️ ▶️ John think of search. It’s a verb meaning to search. Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John is a store where you buy stuff online. If you say Amazon or amazon.com, like, oh, that’s where I
⏹️ ▶️ John order stuff, physical goods come to my house. Microsoft is Windows and Office.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you say Microsoft, people think of the Microsoft PC, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what those companies were built around. All of those companies can arrange
⏹️ ▶️ John a little hardware picture of fabric covered marshmallows and AirPods and all this
⏹️ ▶️ John other stuff like this, but that’s not their main business. Google is a
⏹️ ▶️ John search company that also makes practically everything that Apple makes. Amazon is an online
⏹️ ▶️ John store that also makes practically everything that Apple makes.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And Microsoft is this huge software behemoth
⏹️ ▶️ John that also happens to make everything Apple makes. Apple makes all this stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s their one big thing. They don’t have a Google search. They don’t have an Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John store. They don’t have a Microsoft. They have the iPhone, the Mac, and to a lesser to a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John extent, the HomePod, the Apple TV, the AirPods, you know, like that
⏹️ ▶️ John is Apple’s thing. And in many ways, that’s part of why the expectations
⏹️ ▶️ John for all the stuff that Apple does are higher. I mean, partially because we’re, you know, we’re big Apple fans and
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re in that ecosystem and that’s the stuff we buy and prefer because of their software and everything. But also
⏹️ ▶️ John because if Apple doesn’t do all that stuff better than everyone else,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the whole ball game. As much as they try to expand down to services and Apple has a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John you can pay for news and they have a thing where you can pay for TV services and they’re trying to change that,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to be very difficult for Apple ever to not be the company that makes hardware, software, synergized
⏹️ ▶️ John gadgets and is expected to lead the industry in those things. And for
⏹️ ▶️ John the most part, I feel like they do. Like they made the iPhone first, they made the AirPods. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they are the leaders in this realm, which is why I think it’s so important
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple to keep the pedal to the metal when it comes to those innovations. And yes, to be working
⏹️ ▶️ John on the next big thing, whether it be AR or a car they’re gonna make it, or whatever the hell it is, because they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have sort of their bread and butter to fall back on. Apple did get into Maps and they’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John an impressive job, but there’s like, Apple is not challenging Google for search. They’re not challenging Amazon for retail
⏹️ ▶️ John stores. And iWork is not challenging Office and Exchange for that
⏹️ ▶️ John software world. Arguably, they’re kind of challenging Windows still in the sort of desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John PC space, but that space matters less and less. So anyway, that’s just what I was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John about. You know, when other companies have events like this, it’s almost like they’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John we are Google and also Apple, we can do everything you can do. Almost as good, sometimes better,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes worse. But like, this isn’t even our main business. We’re Google, man. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Amazon, we’re Microsoft. And
⏹️ ▶️ John also, we do everything you do, but backwards and in heels. What’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the predecessor and who?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rogers. Ginger Rogers. Okay. Yeah. Everything you can do, I can do better. I hear you. I never thought of it that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way actually, John, but you make an excellent point. And I don’t know. Any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time that the three of us are negative about Apple, we always get at least a handful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of people complaining about our complaining. And I think sometimes that’s fair. Sometimes I think the three of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us can get wrapped around the axle about certain issues, keyboards and and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco they’re not fixed yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once they fix them, we’ll stop complaining.
⏹️ ▶️ John Fair the beatings will continue until keyboards improve.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but anyways, I don’t know. We it there’s nothing so perfect that it cannot be complained
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about and it’s true and beyond that, I do think that all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in all, I am really pleased with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff that’s in my life. There are things about the Apple stuff in my life that really annoys me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially when I consider my work life rather than my personal life. The lack of documentation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is frustrating to the point of being obnoxious. The beta season
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was difficult. If I was a developer for the Mac, the Catalina
⏹️ ▶️ Casey release just dropping out of the blue would be infuriating. But especially now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve taken the arguably shouldn’t be necessary nuclear step of having blown
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away to my two computers and set them up from scratch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve actually been really pleased. I used Sidecar for the first time for an extended period of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time last week, and it worked really, really well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Catalina on my MacBook, which granted I haven’t been pushing that hard, but Catalina has been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fine for the most part. There’s things that annoy me. I’m not saying it’s perfect, it’s been fine. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my iMac, now that it seems to be working, at least for the next 10 minutes, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reminding me how great a computer this is. I mean, I cannot remember the last time I bought a computer. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I bought this in January of 2016. That is almost four years ago now. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for any normal human whose name is not John Syracuse, four years for a single computer is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long time, especially for an all-in-one computer where the only thing I can change is the RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this thing has been working really, really well. It’s had its bumps for sure, but it’s been working really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really well. And I can’t say that I really long for more speed. I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like more speed, but I don’t feel like I’m constrained by this iMac that’s nearly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four years old. And my iPad Pro, as much as iOS does annoy me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from time to time, when I’m trying to use it for quote unquote real work, by and large,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is a phenomenal computer. And oh my goodness, I cannot have, I do not have enough good things to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about my poor Shattered 11 Pro. My iPhone is so phenomenally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. And yes, the software does let it down, especially lately, kind of often, but by and large,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the things that these devices allow me to do, what was the phrase? Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bicycles for the mind or whatever? The thing that these devices allow me to do really is incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yes, the three of us, myself included, can get a little wrapped around the axle about things that upset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, but it’s because we love them so darn much. And it’s so frustrating to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what we perceive to be fixable problems not fixed. But it is worth remembering for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of us, myself very much included, how unbelievably cool and amazing these devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are. And it’s a miracle that any of them work the way that they do, even half as well as they do. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and as I pointed out, I was emphasizing how important it is for Apple to be the best, but I started
⏹️ ▶️ John that whole segment off by saying how everyone else does what Apple does down to the design details
⏹️ ▶️ John and the overall aesthetic. Like I feel like Apple is still leading in many of these areas. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John that it occurred to me they have to lead in those areas because that is their bread and butter.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they’re not the best at that, then why do they even exist? So I think they are the best at many of those
⏹️ ▶️ John things. And some other company didn’t come up with the Mac and the iPhone and the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad, right? It was an iOS in general. and Coco and Objective-C and
⏹️ ▶️ John all the stuff that came from Next that is now attributed to Apple and yada, yada, yada. So it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John they are leading those areas in the same way that Microsoft may have Bing, but Google is Google, you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just that it’s so much more important for them. Coming off our discussion about the
⏹️ ▶️ John laptops, as they may think laptops are de-emphasized and not as important
⏹️ ▶️ John in the larger scheme of things, but it’s one of the things that they’re known for. It’s part of
⏹️ ▶️ John their equivalent of Google search or Amazon store. They need to execute well. I feel like they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John realized that in the desktop Mac space and have sort of regrouped there and are coming
⏹️ ▶️ John out with computers that are better than the ones that before. And as Marco pointed out, they’re doing really well in the iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad space. And as I think we all talked about in the show every year, the iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ John are really good. Like they’re really good iPhones, right? It’s just those darn laptops, which are
⏹️ ▶️ John a small part of their business, but it’s part of their business that we all use and so we complain about it a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s funny, when you brought up this topic about how all these tech giants basically all kind of do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything now, or at least they all do the same things, I actually didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think of any Apple complaints for this one moment. Instead, this has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been kind of a thing I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while of like, yeah, it seems like Google and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon and Microsoft and Apple and occasionally Facebook all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing a lot of the same things. But I see that not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as like a, hey, Apple should be better. I see it as a tremendous waste
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of collective industry effort and resources and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John talent. It’s called
⏹️ ▶️ John competition, Marco. You want to designate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a winner? What it is, I think, is like, it seems like in the last,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, five to ten years maybe, I don’t know if this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is maybe like a a new thing or if I just didn’t see it before, or if the names were different before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it seems like every tech company has to have everything now. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all have to have a complete ecosystem. And part of it, I guess, is the threat that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they don’t do their own complete ecosystem, then dominant player X is gonna be able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to lock them out of the market or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John that. I see Google Maps and Apple Maps. Like, yeah, because if you don’t have your own thing, then you were at the mercy
⏹️ ▶️ John of the company that does do that thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, see also the entire reason Android exists. Like, it’s literally because like, you know, Google didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want their services locked out of, you know, a world that had Apple and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time, theoretically, Microsoft controlling all of mobile, right? And like, or Blackberry,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever, you know. So like, it seems like the tech companies now all have to have everything because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything is so damn locked down and proprietary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything is a locked down ecosystem. From the voice assistants to the platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the services behind the mall, you know, all these things, everything is so proprietary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and locked down. And so it does create this need and this incentive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like every tech giant to almost defensively create their own versions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of everything, right? And I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so much of a mediocre waste of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much of tech’s immense resources and the talents and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the engineering time and the design time of all these big companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re all just churning and we’re all just grinding our gears against these wasteful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco efforts to fight one walled garden against another in massive ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with massive resources behind it. Like, what if we were solving better problems?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, what if we weren’t all trying to make the same like three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product categories or whatever? Like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s more than three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you’re right I guess. But like, I don’t know, it just, part of this just feels incredibly wasteful and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like of like the world’s resources in a way, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know? Well, it was worse back when it was just one company. When Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John was dominant to the degree that like, younger people probably don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, don’t have a visceral sense of exactly how dominant Microsoft was in the day. Imagine if everything you said
⏹️ ▶️ John was true, but there was literally only one company.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco There was like one company
⏹️ ▶️ John and then like a tiny little gnat that some weird nerds liked, and an even smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John gnat on that gnat. That was like the Mac and like Amiga or whatever they were like, and Linux. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John just, Microsoft was so dominant. Now today we have, like, named three companies. Like we have these big tech companies
⏹️ ▶️ John and yeah, they are all doing the same things and are all sort of competing with each other. But I often think,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, thank God for Google. Cause if it was just Apple or just Microsoft or just Google,
⏹️ ▶️ John they would still all be doing the same things cause there’s sort of financial synergies to make that happen. Like they would find
⏹️ ▶️ John their way to all the same stuff. They’d all be selling media, they’d all have services, they’d all have search and maps
⏹️ ▶️ John and assistants and phones and laptops, right? But if it was just one company, that’s what it felt like in the Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John time that you had no choice. You could use the Mac, which was weird, and you weren’t allowed to use it at work and didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John any software, or you could join the real world and use Microsoft, which is what everybody used.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in most sort of sci-fi dystopias, or bad Black Mirror episodes,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, that’s always the way it is. There’s always one company, whether it’s MomCo or whatever from Futurama, or
⏹️ ▶️ John just the big company that controls everything, and there’s just one of them. Very rarely
⏹️ ▶️ John are there three or four massively power, sort of equally large, financially
⏹️ ▶️ John successful, powerful companies competing, it’s always like, oh, the dystopia is all of your appliances are from this
⏹️ ▶️ John company, and all your computers are from this company, and your car is from this company, and you work at the, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s worse, right? The duplication of effort, I kind of understand that. Like, we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about this, I think, speaking of Apple Maps, back when we were talking about Apple Maps, like, the brief
⏹️ ▶️ John moment in time where it looked like, you know, Apple was, you know, Microsoft was fading,
⏹️ ▶️ John so that dark time was ending. Apple was rising, and
⏹️ ▶️ John we all liked that because we liked Apple. And there was these other companies that did their things. You had
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon that sold you stuff, and you had Google that had search. You remember the brief moment, it’s like, yeah, it’ll be like, Apple will make
⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware and the OS and it’ll tie in with Google services, like Google Maps, because their search and
⏹️ ▶️ John maps are really good, and we’ll get the best of everybody. Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board, and
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll all work together and that’s not the way. That’s not the way competition works.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the sort of synergy where each company would be like, you stay in your lane and I stay in my lane and we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John work together. You know, you’ll have this section in the market and we’ll have that section and we’ll make
⏹️ ▶️ John a combination product that’s the best of all possible worlds. That’s not the way things work
⏹️ ▶️ John and probably not the way they should work. But we had a glimpse of that and it seemed like, boy, if these companies would just sort of stay
⏹️ ▶️ John pigeonholed to the things that they seem to be good at right now. But
⏹️ ▶️ John realistically, we wouldn’t want that to happen either. We do want every company trying to be all things to all people,
⏹️ ▶️ John because some of them will do this kind of product better than other ones, and we need them all to exist
⏹️ ▶️ John and keep trying so that we have some kind of choice. Now, Marco’s larger point about Walt Gardens is the real problem is
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can’t really mix and match that easily, but you can mix and match a little bit. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’re probably the worst it’s ever been in terms of mixing and matching, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I have Google cylinders in the house that I talked to, but I’m otherwise totally in on the Apple thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I have Google stuff attached to my TV, but I also have a TV attached to my TV, but I also have Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV attached to my television. There are and they all use the same Internet connection and
⏹️ ▶️ John the same web browser engine, thanks to Apple across many of the platforms. Like so it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a complete dystopia, but to the extent that these ecosystems try to
⏹️ ▶️ John completely wall us off from each other, I think consumers rebel against that. And that’s why I subscribe
⏹️ ▶️ John to Hulu and Apple TV Plus and also Netflix. And those are all like deadly competitors in the video
⏹️ ▶️ John streaming market, but there’s nothing stopping me from having all of them. Anything that did stop me from having
⏹️ ▶️ John all of them would be frowned upon by consumers and wouldn’t do well. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you bought a Sony television and you couldn’t watch Netflix, or even if you bought a Sony television and
⏹️ ▶️ John you couldn’t watch Hulu, or you couldn’t watch Apple TV Plus, that’s not gonna fly. Sony, as a television maker, needs to make
⏹️ ▶️ John sure that you can see all of those things on it. In fact, they build in half those things inside the television set, let alone
⏹️ ▶️ John the boxes that connect to it. So I’m, for the most part, optimistic, coming from the dark
⏹️ ▶️ John time of Microsoft, which is sort of my formative tech dystopia, is Microsoft,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Now and forever will be. Maybe kids today, their formative tech dystopia
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the closed ecosystem of Apple or something. I mean, I suppose Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John is all of our tech dystopia, but I’m mostly just sectioning them off
⏹️ ▶️ John in the sort of pit of despair that is social media, along with Twitter. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, we can all agree that of all these companies, Facebook is definitely the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously, sure. Easy, easy answer. But yeah, and Facebook doesn’t make,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, doesn’t make any of these products successfully. Do they make cylinders that you talk to? I think they have
⏹️ ▶️ John some weird thing that you talk to, but I think people are wisely staying away from that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe it’s like a camera you put in your underwear, something like that. You can trust them, don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ John That sounds right. Yeah. Right. It’s a surveillance camera for your bathroom. Didn’t they make a phone at some point?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they only put their software on a phone. Nobody wanted it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And I don’t know if they make earbuds, but I’m assuming they would track you and film video and
⏹️ ▶️ John send advertisements to you. Anyway, they seem incapable of
⏹️ ▶️ John fielding the same suite of things. So they’re content to merely control the political direction of the world
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of our lives.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oy. That got intense. All right, let’s do some Ask ATP and lighten things up.
#askatp: Mac CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tom Zosch writes, when considering Mac processor options for a new Mac purchase,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how can I tell if I would benefit most from higher single core or multi-core performance? John, what do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you think about that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I put this question there because it sounds like if you’re a tech nerd, experienced computer user listening
⏹️ ▶️ John to this show, you’re like, well, what a dumb question. Of course, you can tell if your apps benefit
⏹️ ▶️ John from multiple cores if the app uses multiple cores, but it’s not a dumb question. It’s not like a thing you sense
⏹️ ▶️ John mentally, you just know which application. There’s an answer, and the answer is
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the box on a Mac, is if you open Activity Monitor and bring up the CPU graph thingy that shows
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of little bar graphs for your CPU usage, and then do a thing that takes
⏹️ ▶️ John a long time in the application that you’re interested in, and if you see all the bars go up while you’re waiting
⏹️ ▶️ John for the thing that takes a long time, that application uses all your cores. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you get something with more cores, there’s a very high chance that if you add a couple more cores, it will take less time
⏹️ ▶️ John and it will use them. Not a guarantee because it is possible a badly written program could use like certain
⏹️ ▶️ John number of your cores but not all of them. Games are a lot like that. Sometimes if you add more cores games don’t take advantage of them. So beware,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s the tool you need. You want to use activity monitor, you want to look at the CPU graph, and you want to look at those little bars.
⏹️ ▶️ John If only one of the bars goes up all the way and the rest of the bars stay down, getting more cores won’t help that
⏹️ ▶️ John program. So that’s how you tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s also, I mean, there’s a lot of complexities to this in reality, but but, you know, so John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device is good if it is, you know, mostly multi-core. And the good news is, if it’s mostly single-core,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco single-core performance across Apple’s entire Mac lineup doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vary as much as you think it might.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s almost as good as their phone. Yeah. Oh. Wow. Brutal. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John never get old until they come out with ARM Macs. I’m gonna just put that in every show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, so like, if you actually look at things like Geekbench and look at single core benchmarks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are a few complicating factors here, like how long can something boost at maximum speed and everything. But for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most part, single core performance within a certain generation, year-wise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Intel’s processors doesn’t change that much between the products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there are differences, but they’re smaller than you think. They’re smaller than the initial advertised clock speeds would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggest. There actually is not, I’ve said this before, there is not as much variation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the processor options that you have as upgrades or as built-to-order customizations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a certain product line as you might think. You might have, for a given laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, there might be a $300 option that’ll get you a processor that has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher clock speed than the one that comes stock on that model. But that usually is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a great use of that money. Usually, if you actually look at the benchmarks, because of things like turbo boost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and thermal limits everything, it actually doesn’t usually perform as much better as you would think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usually for that $300 ish upgrade, you’re getting something like 10% more performance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe at most. Uh, it often is not very big. And so if you’re trying to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of processor choice, usually you can just stick with the base processor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in most of the Mac families, if you just stick with the base that it comes with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or maybe do one small upgrade to maybe go from the i5 to the i7. You will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get some value out of that, but if you’re trying to figure out where to allocate those funds to best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spend them, spend them on a larger SSD. You’ll notice that more than you’ll notice the extra 5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 10% on the processor. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with that wholeheartedly.
#askatp: Wireless CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Kenny Long writes, I’m buying a new car and was looking forward to finally getting CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but learned that most all models are not wireless. Is plugging in every time as annoying as it sounds? Any worthwhile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey workarounds? Let me start by saying worthwhile workarounds, none that I’m aware of and I don’t expect there to ever be.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to plugging in, is plugging in every time as annoying as it sounds? Kinda?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In my experience, and I typically, most of my car trips are five miles or less, and I live in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a sane place, so five miles or less means like, you know, 10 minutes or less. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of that, I almost never plug in my phone to the car. I usually use Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to listen to like Overcast or something like that. The occasions that would cause me to plug in are if I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the middle of a text message conversation and want to continue it, I will do that, you know, verbally using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the assistant. I almost said her name. And I will do that. That is much easier to do via CarPlay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I’m going somewhere I don’t know where I’m going, I will typically, I mean, my car does have navigation, as does Aaron’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they both have CarPlay. I could plug in the address in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the onboard navigation, but I typically find it just easier to use either Apple or Google
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or Waze on CarPlay. But generally speaking, I don’t plug in unless I feel like I need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And so I don’t find it particularly egregious or difficult at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I personally would not buy a car without CarPlay because I do feel like it’s future-proofing, as I’ve said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many times on the show. It’s future-proofing that car because the car’s navigation system is unlikely to get any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better anytime soon. That is one of the advantages of owning a Tesla is that, you know, your software always gets better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Of course, I can’t ask Marco about CarPlay because one of the big disadvantages of Tesla is that they refuse to acknowledge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that CarPlay or Android Auto exist. I have understood that wireless CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is amazing and I have not experienced it myself. The combination of wireless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey carplay and Qi charging sounds like just bliss on wheels, but again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is not something I’ve experienced personally. Although I do, I believe the Audi e-tron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has both wireless charging and wireless carplay, if I’m not mistaken. So Marco, if you want to buy an actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good electric car, you could consider that for your next ride.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, Tiff’s car has wireless or wireless carplay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that’s right. I forgot about that. Yes, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. I have used it zero times and I’m pretty sure she has used it zero times. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how often do you drive her car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though? Almost never.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, okay, see there you go. And John, you are on the same buying strategy for cars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as you are computers, so I know this is
⏹️ ▶️ John irrelevant. Except I don’t buy a computer that costs as much as a car. Well, I don’t know how that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey works with the car analogy. You’re about to. I don’t buy a car that costs as
⏹️ ▶️ John much as a house, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, there you go. So yeah, that’s my two cents, and I hope that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, speaking of, before we get to that one, speaking of Tiff’s car, you know they don’t I don’t know what she’s going to do when her lease
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I guess we could get a Tesla.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I was looking at, we were trying to figure out, like, we’re looking at some kind of compact electric option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for her to replace it anyway. So that’s fine. But I was looking at the site, and I was surprised. Like, are the GTs just
⏹️ ▶️ John No. No more GT model for 2020. What happened? I mean, like, None of the people bought
⏹️ ▶️ John them. I mean, I don’t see them. I see them hardly anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco When I do see them,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to do like a triple take. I’m like, what is that weird, oh, that’s TIFF’s BMW. Like, I do not see.
⏹️ ▶️ John I see tons of BMWs that are not see a lot of that model. So I’m assuming it doesn’t sell well, but yeah, not not
⏹️ ▶️ John in the three or the five GT. I think they’re all gone in BMWs model lineup from
⏹️ ▶️ John now on. So yeah, if you need any further encouragement to find some electric option for her, there you have it. She can’t even get
⏹️ ▶️ John the same car again unless you guys used.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I mean, then we might as well just buy out her lease. But yeah, we have to actually we actually have to make a decision on that like this month. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really? Yeah, the lease is up in December. So anything needs to be ordered. We need to get on that pretty quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco survive with a single car. I think you’ll be OK. That’s one of the options we’re looking at, actually.
#askatp: Destiny stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, then finally, Marco, you and I can just sign off and go to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tobo Granite would like to know things about Destiny. I don’t even know what this means. Since Syracuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not likely to ever do the Destiny podcast I’d so love, this is Tobo Granite speaking, not me. Any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thoughts on Shadowkeep, whatever that means, and what it means for the kind of game that Destiny is likely to become, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is actually very interesting and there could be a full podcast that even people who don’t know or care anything
⏹️ ▶️ John about Destiny would be interested in. Because the way games are financed and sold
⏹️ ▶️ John continues to change. We know, all three of us know about the whole mobile games
⏹️ ▶️ John and free to play and all those exploitive mechanics, sort of the dark side of that. And I think we mostly know about the good side
⏹️ ▶️ John of mobile games that we’ve all come to love and how those are sold and marketed and what the economic model of those look
⏹️ ▶️ John like. But in another section of the gaming industry, in the world of sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John AAA, as they’re called, triple A console and PC games, the way they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John sold and funded and how the ongoing development
⏹️ ▶️ John of those funded has been changing. There’s some weird stuff out there that’s sort of innovated in this area like World of Warcraft, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is like a 15 year old game at this point that charges people a subscription fee that sort of gets you to
⏹️ ▶️ John adopt it as a lifestyle and as you know from talking to me all these years, Destiny
⏹️ ▶️ John is also kind of one of those games but it’s not a subscription model. I don’t pay a monthly fee to
⏹️ ▶️ John play destiny. I just in theory by a game. And so destiny came from a world where you’d buy a game for $60
⏹️ ▶️ John and then play it, but they, they would want to keep selling you content. Uh, you know, you probably
⏹️ ▶️ John noticed DLC downloadable content from back in the day when you’re getting a horse armor and stuff like that. But the current model
⏹️ ▶️ John that so many games follow is sort of either you buy a game upfront or not, but then continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay for sort of regularly scheduled content drops, which is such a sort of clinical phrase, But like basically
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll keep playing the same game and they have all sorts of mechanics that Give
⏹️ ▶️ John you new things to play in the game and new things to accomplish and you pay for them But it’s not a subscription.
⏹️ ▶️ John The new model is mostly If you want to sit out this quote-unquote season, they actually call them seasons
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t play the season. Maybe you’re playing some other game. Maybe you’re not into it anymore But if you come back to it We want to make it
⏹️ ▶️ John so that you don’t feel like you’ve been less left behind hopelessly That was a problem destiny had in many years is that
⏹️ ▶️ John if you weren’t playing the game like a lifestyle, like it’s your job, right? All your friends would get ahead
⏹️ ▶️ John of where you are. And you’d want to get back into it. But you’d be so far behind them and you couldn’t catch up. And then you couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John play the new content because you had to sort of be leveled and have all these items to play the new content.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re like, well, that’s not fair. This should make it so anyone could jump in at any time. But if you do that, it disincentivizes people to play because
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, well, if I if my friend who hasn’t played for six months can just jump right in and be exactly where I was, I don’t feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John I have accomplished anything in those six months. haven’t earned these cool items or got to experience this cool content. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a long way of saying that Shadowkeep and what Bungie is doing with Destiny twofold
⏹️ ▶️ John one, they got out of what apparently was not a very constructive relationship with their previous publisher,
⏹️ ▶️ John Activision, and now they’re on their own, which is good in that they get to sort of call their own shots
⏹️ ▶️ John without having to talk to some money people who make them make bad decisions about their game, but bad in that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no money person dropping money on their heads to make the game. It’s all on them. So they have to figure out a way to
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of thread this needle. Make a game where you feel like your time investing
⏹️ ▶️ John is in letting you accomplish something, where you spend the time and you get the
⏹️ ▶️ John good item and you level up. But also make it so that if you sit out a season
⏹️ ▶️ John or your friends sit out a season, that they can come back very quickly, but you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John also feel cheated by them sort of cutting in line or whatever. And it’s very difficult balance and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John working on that. and you know, and how much do I charge for each of these seasons? And what do you get in the season? And can you play for free?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like destiny is free to free to download and play right now. But if you want to get the good content, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay something for it. And anyway, and avoiding pay to win mechanics, which is a whole big thing. Nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John likes a game where you can pay money and get a better item that lets you play the game better. So you can
⏹️ ▶️ John only charge people for essentially cosmetic items or things that don’t actually affect gameplay. And that’s a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John line to tread. Anyway, the final thing that I think interesting in shadowkeep is that
⏹️ ▶️ John the model destiny had been following which is pass money will give you content
⏹️ ▶️ John the game will expand so on and so forth can’t continue like that forever
⏹️ ▶️ John because what they would do is you get the game then you get an expansion then you get a second expansion then you
⏹️ ▶️ John get a third expansion then you get a fourth expansion eventually the game is a huge as in like hundreds of gigabytes
⏹️ ▶️ John on your on your hard drive and b it becomes too overwhelmingly large
⏹️ ▶️ John like you can’t add content forever to the same game i suppose unless your world of warcraft
⏹️ ▶️ John without it being becoming overwhelming to both new players and existing players so with shadow keep i think they finally
⏹️ ▶️ John said we’re going to put content out in a season and when the season is over
⏹️ ▶️ John some of that content will leave with the season whether it be destinations or items that you can’t get again or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and that i think will keep a a more manageable game size. Now this bungee is just beginning
⏹️ ▶️ John this new phase of their development. But I mean, you guys make fun of
⏹️ ▶️ John me for being into and playing destiny. But I have to say that kind of like following a sports team,
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the fun of being into destiny is the is like the metagame, like people
⏹️ ▶️ John who get into like sports teams and learn about like the trades and who’s the manager and what position people
⏹️ ▶️ John are in and salary negotiations and who they pick in the draft. To many people that is
⏹️ ▶️ John as much fun as the sports part. To other people it’s even more fun. And in the world of Destiny,
⏹️ ▶️ John figuring out what Bungie is doing to design their game around the desires
⏹️ ▶️ John of their players and the need to make money and how they schedule their content drops and how things come out when
⏹️ ▶️ John and how that works financially is, to me, at least as interesting as the game itself. And I like the game
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. So I’m enjoying that aspect as always. I am enjoying that ongoing,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to say struggle, but ongoing communication between Bungie and its players
⏹️ ▶️ John and the software they put out to try to make a symbiotic relationship where they
⏹️ ▶️ John give them, we give them money and they give us fun in a cycle that makes everybody feel good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Historically, that cycle has not been a smooth circle and it’s had jagged bumps all over it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I do enjoy the process and I think it’s fascinating from like a software perspective, from a technology perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ John from a business perspective, and from a gaming perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode and DoorDash, and we will see you next.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was accidental. It’s accidental. And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at ATP.FM. And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse. It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to. Accidental, tech podcast so long.
Neutral: Small electrics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Marco, in the show, you mentioned that you have to replace TIFF’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Subaru Outback, BMW 3GT, and you had mentioned that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you were going to consider smaller electric cars. Tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. I mean, it’s a little early. First of all, why are they stopping making the GT? The 5GT was a monster, but the 3GT is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really good car.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s weird looking and nobody buys it. I mean, I think that’s the answer. Like, they’re not making manuals, they’re not making the 3GT
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore. Yeah, I guess honestly, like at this rate, like we’re lucky if any automaker are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still making like sedans.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like even that is an endangered
⏹️ ▶️ John species. Ford’s not making sedans anymore. I think GM’s not making sedans. I forget, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think all the American car makers have said they’re not making sedans. I forget, but yeah, very few sedans. Uh, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I, I bet there’ll be a three GT like replacement, uh, by the time
⏹️ ▶️ John BMW goes all electric, which I think this currently scheduled for like 2025 or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And it’s, I, you know, all I like, all I want is just make like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your existing car lineup. Just give electric options. Like what I, I would love an electric two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco series. Like I don’t want some weirdo. Like the I three is fine. It’s weird. We might get one. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a, there’s currently a pretty compelling lease special on it. so we’ll see. But I don’t know. Like it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want some like weirdo new model. I just want like, you know, in John’s terminology, like we want like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a car shaped car, just electric. How do you make those? And there are very few of them. No, they don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They really don’t. They make SUV shaped cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John The e-tron are exactly like the other Audis, but with ugly girls in them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess they’re electric, but it’s only the, it’s only the SUV right now. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s all anyone makes. It all makes sedans. What are you talking about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like all the other ones like like, you know, like the of all the compelling options you basically have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the Chevy Bolt Which is a fairly compelling option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We haven’t actually tested everyone yet. But like I have really what do you think of it? Yeah, my parents have one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah I think I knew that I forgot about it because it’s kind of it’s like kind of like a crossover SUV kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of thing also, right
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s weird. It’s a tall ugly car. I think that’s the category.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s a tuck ugly car Ugly but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not attractive and it is a it is a tall car It is as much as I like to snark on the GT
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is kind of outback ish in the sense that the car is tall But it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very high off the ground like an SUV is it’s still low, but it’s kind of tall It’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey odd to describe but I will say driving it it, surprisingly good. I was really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going into this expecting to hate that thing. And it is actually, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me, who is not used to a Tesla, like I’ve driven Teslas many more times than one would expect,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having never owned one, but I am not used to a Tesla in the same way that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you or some of our other friends may be. And the Bolt is actually surprisingly, surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. I was really, really impressed by it. If you went I3, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would not get the range extended or whatever they call it one, you would get the straight electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. Yeah. And yeah, because we don’t really need the range extender
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I would not want it just for complexity and long-term service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco risk needs. Having a simpler mechanical thing, especially for BMW,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably for the best. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the options that we were looking at aren’t incredibly competitive. Like our friend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a Kia Soul EV, which is a surprisingly good value in practice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they are currently not in production. They’re like between model eras and they’re like, they’re currently, you can’t buy them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that, that would be a contender. The i3 looks, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, good for the i3. I like that it has a very small garage footprint. It’s it’s a weirdly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tall car, but it’s also very narrow and short. And so it actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would kind of be kind of nice. But like all these have like major problems like the… We got the
⏹️ ▶️ John e-Golf, which is exactly what you asked for. It’s just a car but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey electric. Yes, but they don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, it’s very hard to find.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re out of production now, if I’m not mistaken. I could have that wrong, but I don’t think they’re in… I don’t think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey making them anymore. However, that is absolutely as much as I am obviously biased about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Given what you’re describing about a car shaped car, without question, the e-Golf is the right answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s golf shape. Oh, I walked right into it. I walked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in. But but here’s the problem with the golf, right? So it has you know, among these cars, there’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like two range classes. There’s like the ones that are around 100 120 mile range,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which are kind of like the like old generation electric entry level cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s ones that are like, you know, 200 or not, right? So like the Chevy Bolt is is like 238. And officially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the new one, the the golf is the old range. It is 125 miles. It’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero to 60 in about eight and a half seconds. So a little, little sluggish there. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we don’t want like a step down from her three 40 GT in, in speed, at least much of one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s, that seems like it’d be kind of a step down in both. Um, the model three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a very interesting option here. It’s just one of the most expensive options. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like, it does really kind of destroy the other ones in lots of different ways. I can see,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not even being an existing Tesla fan, I can see why the Model 3 is selling so well. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you compare it to other cars that are other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entry level, or sorry, mid-range electric cars, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really does compete very well against them, at least on paper.
⏹️ ▶️ John see. Because there are no other mid-range sedans. They’re all little SUVs.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Model Y is the actual Tesla competitor to the whole rest of the car industry because
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole rest of the car industry makes big and small SUVs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but like it’s, yeah. So, and also like other things like the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of these don’t have things that we want like sunroofs or all-wheel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive. Like there’s just like little things that like you think like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, if you’re just looking at drive train first, you might miss some of this stuff or not realize it. And then you start digging in, you’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait a minute, only like two of these even have a sunroof option and not include the Model 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the way. Model 3, although, is the only one that I can find that has all-wheel drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It also has the longest range, it’s the fastest.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We can’t find a good option yet, but we do have to do a lot of test driving still, which we just have been delaying because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re not that motivated. But I’m really disappointed in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how relatively few pure electric car options we still have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I was assuming years ago, like I was assuming that by now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’d be able to, especially someone like BMW, who’s so tech forward and was pretty early to having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an electric option at all, I would expect now to be able to go and buy just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an electric 3-series, which you can’t do still. They recently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco added the plug-in hybrids to some of their model lines, but it’s very, very few, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a plug-in hybrid is not an electric car. Like it’s kind of a half-assed solution, but that’s not what we’re looking for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I thought there’d be more options by now. I love that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Honda e thing, that looks so cool not being released in the US.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there’s so many, like, so many of these options are like almost really cool or almost good and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just can’t get them or they fall over in some critical way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know, what am
⏹️ ▶️ John I missing? Utrend’s not four-wheel drive, I thought it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is, I believe. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a car. It’s not it’s a tall wagon. It’s not as bad as an SUV. It’s more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it is very good looking in person I’ve seen one once and it was very good looking but I am not nearly as offended
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Non sedans as the two of you
⏹️ ▶️ John are. Yeah, you should actually you should see if there’s like lurking within tiff some
⏹️ ▶️ John Like like there apparently wasn’t Aaron some sort of latent SUV love Which apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a thing that lurks in people and they don’t want to admit it But suddenly you put them up in a big high
⏹️ ▶️ John chair in the sky and they’re like, ooh Ooh. So you should try the Jaguar I-Pace. And she’ll be like, wow, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting so high. Maybe she’ll love it. Erin seems to like her car. And it’s a monster,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So you never know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you think you know someone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could be unintentionally shaming Tiff into not liking giant SUVs like the whole rest of the world does.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the whole rest of the US,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry. What we should probably do is probably just go test drive a Chevy Volt. That’s probably going to be the right answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should test drive the I-Pace and the e-tron as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree. But one thing we also wanted was something small. We want the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size—because we have—my car is big. We already have a big car for when we need a big car.
⏹️ ▶️ John car, we want something small. I think those are both smaller than your car, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why does it matter if it’s electric? The whole point of getting a small car in the olden days was because it was more fuel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey efficient. Why does it matter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John if it’s electric?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s more unwieldy and it takes up room in the garage and might ding Marco’s good car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The correct answer to your question, by the way, which you’re not going to like, but it is the correct answer to your question, except it’s not available
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet, is the Polestar 2, which is Volvo’s sedan-shaped sedan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is all-electric. I don’t know if it’s all-wheel drive, actually, but it has the equivalent of 490 foot-pounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of torque. It has the equivalent of 300-plus miles of range, or so they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds. In so many ways, I think this is exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the right solution for you if you don’t want to just get another Tesla.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sunroof? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s a fine question, actually. Essential feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It looks nice. It does look a little bit big, but it does look nice, I’ll tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you that. But I think like all those cars, I think the I-PACE and the e-tron are both smaller than the Model
⏹️ ▶️ John S. Like, not by a lot, but smaller. And I think the Polestar 2, eh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like the dimensions.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, the Polestar 2 is that one. What about the Polestar 1? Where’s this? This looks
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty nice. Yeah, the Polestar 2 is the one that’s like, you can tell it’s sitting on top of it’s battery pack. I think it looks ungainly.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Polestar one is the nicer looking one, but it’s not practical, I think. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also doesn’t seem to exist.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of these cars exist? I just, why? We’ve known about electric cars for quite some
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t we have any? Go test drive a Taycan, or sorry, Taycan, the
⏹️ ▶️ John pronunciation is coming down on that. Is that how you’re supposed to pronounce that? Yeah, they want you to say
⏹️ ▶️ John I think. It’s definitely Tay, the second syllable, I’m pretty sure is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco con. Well, it’s way too expensive and bloated and not what I’m looking for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey First deliveries of the Polestar 2, July 2020. What about the one? Is that a thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not a thing. No, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. You don’t want that. Oh, it’s hybrid. What the f- Polestar 1 was like, is it before the Polestar 2?
⏹️ ▶️ John Polestar 1 is like their sort of flagship,
⏹️ ▶️ John fancy, impractical car. And it was made in the hybrid era, not in the electric era.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it looks good. Does look good. Definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks good. And what the Honda thing? Where’s the Honda thing? Bring that to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey US. What you want does not exist.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that- I think that there will be a small Honda EV, but Honda is not tech forward.
⏹️ ▶️ John So don’t hold your breath for that. I mean, talk about, like, it’s a kind of amazing that Honda has
⏹️ ▶️ John done that at all. You know, Honda was barely putting turbochargers in its
⏹️ ▶️ John cars, so, you know. But it will come eventually, but for this round, I think you’re gonna have to
⏹️ ▶️ John get something else. You know, test drive doesn’t mean buying. You should test drive them all anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John then you might might release those latent uh… suvi love jeans
⏹️ ▶️ John stasker and about her experience of living with an sdv chamber for all those years and finally breaking through and
⏹️ ▶️ John getting to be here uh… her bad as you the self
⏹️ ▶️ Casey i never had never really seemed to that much for cities are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really didn’t well i’m trying to get more garage space not less
⏹️ ▶️ John than i understand the struggle for garage space i’m more than anyone i think that what the real it’s really it’s a curious marker was the
⏹️ ▶️ John park in the dead center of his
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gigantic garage
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco around the car
⏹️ ▶️ John that i can swing them open with impunity and not even hit his rack mounted networking gear with this door,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is ridiculous because you could just summon your stupid Tesla and then it’ll it’ll unleash itself. You don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John about the ultimate luxury of being able to swing your doors open in your garage to park dead center in a two car garage.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what he’s looking for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever whenever either me or tiff like go away for a weekend and leave the other person here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You park in the middle. Yeah, we always like we always like park like a jerk and take a picture and a sentence the other person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a car like park like diagonally
⏹️ ▶️ John the It was like that Seinfeld episode, wide luxurious lanes. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You have to do it. That’s the rules of being married with a two-car garage. That is what has to happen.